Iced Mochas
by prongsno
Summary: Muggle AU. James is tired. Lily shows him the world of caffeine. One shot drabble.


**Author's note** : so it's been ages since I've posted fics on this site, and since all my new marauder fics are on ao3 I thought I'd slowly start to publish them on here too!

This is based off a prompt I was given on tumblr about a sleepy James. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

Lily has been staring at him for the past 3 hours. Not in a creepy way, of course… but it's kind of hard _not to_.

He yawns, shuffles around in his seat to get comfortable and then stares at his book for about thirty seconds before his eyes start to flutter open and shut for a few minutes. Then his head suddenly drops, so quickly that the shock of it wakes him back up. _Then_ he does the whole thing all over again.

He's seriously been doing this for the past three hours and Lily is really starting to worry because he must have whiplash by now. Seriously. And he is _definitely_ running out of swear words, because each time he catches himself falling asleep he cusses. What starts off as the generic everyday eff this and eff that quickly turns into 'bloody jaffa-cake bleeding bacon' and it's shocking how, in the tired state he is clearly in, he's not running out of words to turn into said swear-words.

Also she's been staring at him for the past three hours doing literally nothing. She _has_ to do something.

"Would you like a coffee?"

Only seconds earlier he'd just slapped his face hard to try and wake himself up and now, as she stands before him hugging her medical book to her chest for comfort, he stares up at her with wide eyes.

He opens his mouth to say something, then stops. Then he looks up at her again, then around the library.

"Pardon?" he asks finally, squinting his eyes at her. She blushes.

She starts the question again but trails off when he starts to fidget, looking under his piles of books and bags and sweet chocolate wrappers for something that is of obvious importance.

"Sorry," he murmurs to her, squinting up at her again before he grabs at things again. "I'm just…"

A book drops from his desk, hitting the hard wood floor with a BANG.

Students around them look up in alarm, glare and give them a very angry _sssshhh!_ before diving back into their books.

"Looking for something?" she asks quietly once she picks up the book. It's a giant _The Oxford History of Britain_ and it hits the desk with a dull plod. The boy is still looking, clearly in a mild state of panic now.

"My glasses," he whispers frantically. "I can't see without them and-"

"Is it the pair hanging from your shirt?"

His hands fly to his chest before he grabs at them, muttering how much of an idiot he is, and placing them back on his face.

"Sorry," he mutters, gazing up at her clearly now in such shock that he almost drops another book.

"What did you... err?"

"Coffee. I think you need some."

"Probably," he drops his gaze back onto the endless piles of books on his cluttered desk. "But that stuff seems disgusting."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"Once." he grabs at the wrappers around him, scrunching them into a ball and stuffing them into his coat pocket before looking at her again. "When I was ten. Never touched it since."

Seven minutes later they stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the coffee shop directly underneath the first floor of the library.

His bag is packed to the rim of heavy history books, so numerous he can't even close the zip all the way.

"I don't really drink coffee," he says for the tenth time, stifling down a yawn as he says so.

She rolls her eyes and gets out her coffee card.

"Trust me, Joe. I'm saving your life right now."

"Why do you keep calling me Joe?"

She looks up at him in alarm, the light of the refrigerator section illuminating the blush that creeps up on her cheeks.

"Isn't that your name?"

"No."

"Oh. Jude?"

"No."

"Jason?"

"Nah. I'll give you a clue. It rhymes with… frames." He taps the edge of his glasses with a smirk. She can't help but snicker.

She buys him an iced mocha, since he obviously has a sweet tooth, and watches expectantly as he takes a cautious first sip.

"Well?"

Seventeen minutes he's buying another, a crazy gleam in his eye as he tells her that was the best thing he's ever tasted.

"Too much caffeine is bad for you, you know that right?"

"You're the one that got me here…"

When he trails off she realises he's asking a silent question.

"I rhyme with… hilly."

There's a slight pause. "Millie?"

"No, but close. Lily."

She realises, thirty minutes later, that giving James Potter an iced mocha was both the best and worst thing she's ever done.

The best thing because she's now sitting next to him and they're now friends and have each other's numbers on their phones and he's wonderful and also rather good looking.

And the worst thing because he's had that much coffee that he's yawning ever thirty seconds, giggling and also extremely hyper.

They both agree that the best thing is for her to walk him to his flat. She has to hold onto his waist (not that she's complaining) because otherwise he'll fall like jelly to the floor - something that happens once whilst they wait for the green man at a traffic light. She has to pull him up, both of them laughing and gasping for breath as cars whizz and whoosh past them.

He looks rough when he opens the door to the flat and tells her she can have a cup of tea for her troubles.

He's literally a walking zombie when they walk into the kitchen-slash-living room area and he shuffles up to the kettle like he's made out of iron.

"What the hell happened to you?"

A dashing looking boy with sunglasses on (yes, sunglasses on inside) takes one look at James and laughs.

"You! Dammit Sirius, forcing me to go to the library after you trashed this place." James groans and grabs three mugs from the cupboard.

His hands are shaking and he stifles another yawn again.

"I found him in the library," Lily grins. "The poor guy was really too tragic for me to leave alone."

James fights a blush and thrusts a cup of tea into her and Sirius' hands before he sits down on the sofa.

He groans, rubs his eyes and mutters 'I hate everything'.

"Don't forget your tea, mate."

"I won't. Just… I need a…"

It takes him all of just sixty seconds before his head lolls to the side and he's fast asleep. It takes another twenty seconds before he starts snoring.

"Thanks for looking after him," Sirius gives Lily a high five. "You're welcome to stay until the fool wakes up and then he can ask you out properly."

When he wakes he does exactly that. And Lily, of course, says yes. As long as he never has coffee again.


End file.
